Creating a realistic world map - Landmass formation

This question focuses on the initial creation of landmasses.

• What are the processes that causes land-masses to form, and continents and islands to rise up from the sea and sink back into it?

• How can those processes be easily drawn upon to create realistic looking maps?

Note:

This is part of a series of questions that tries to break down the process of creating a world from initial creation of the landmass through to erosion, weather patterns, biomes and every other related topics. Please restrict answers to this specific topic rather than branching on into other areas as other subjects will be covered by other questions.

These questions all assume an earth-like spherical world in orbit in the habitable band.

See the other questions in this series here : Creating a realistic world Series

posted about 10 years ago

Tim B‭

51 reputation 32 5 5 0